News Updates – New York Philharmonic

The next time Wynton Marsalis writes a symphony for the New York Philharmonic, he might want to plan from the start to keep it well under an hour. At least if he wants to assure that the Philharmonic will be able to perform it complete.
Timing was a factor in 2010, when Alan Gilbert led the American premiere of Mr. Marsalis’s Symphony No. 3, “Swing Symphony,” on a season-opening gala program. Because it was being televised on “Live From Lincoln Center,” the concert had to come in under two hours. So Mr. Gilbert dropped the first of Mr. Marsalis’s six movements, which still left some 45 minutes of music. (The symphony was performed in full the following season, and then again, with yet another movement added, in 2013.)
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Music Director Alan Gilbert will conduct the New York Philharmonic in the World Premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner Wynton Marsalis’s The Jungle (Symphony No. 4), commissioned by the Philharmonic as the first of The New York Commissions, with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis; William Bolcom’s Trombone Concerto with Principal Trombone Joseph Alessi as soloist; and Copland’s Quiet City, featuring Principal Trumpet Christopher Martin and English horn player Grace Shryock in her Philharmonic solo debut. The performances take place Wednesday, December 28, 2016, at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, December 29 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, December 30 at 8:00 p.m.; and Tuesday, January 3 at 7:30 p.m.
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What better way to open an orchestra’s new season than with a new piece? That was Alan Gilbert’s reasoning last September, when he inaugurated his tenure as music director of the New York Philharmonic with the premiere of “EXPO,” an exciting work by Magnus Lindberg, the Philharmonic’s composer in residence.
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Wednesday evening, September 22, will be a very special occasion. On that occasion Live From Lincoln Center will inaugurate its 35th anniversary season of presenting the arts from the stages of America’s premier Performing Arts center.
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The New York Philharmonic messed up rhythms, the singers struggled to find their cues and conductor Kurt Masur begged for last-minute clarifications in a score that never had been performed before.
Meanwhile, composer Wynton Marsalis paced the stage of Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, attempting to answer 1,001 questions lobbed at him by instrumentalists, singers, technicians and practically everyone else within earshot.
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Music is the soul of society, the heart of culture. So, at least, it was variously pronounced by the likes of Itzhak Perlman and Beverly Sills in the course of an evening devoted to bringing it back. “Bringing Back the Music” was the title of the New York Philharmonic’s joint benefit concert with and for the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra on Friday night at Avery Fisher Hall. New Orleans, of course, was the intended destination of this particular return: orchestral music in other American cities will have to continue to fend for itself.
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William Vacchiano, a trumpeter whose musical career started in Maine and took him to the New York Philharmonic and The Juilliard School, died at 93 on September 19, 2005. Vacchiano was principal trumpet for 31 years at the New York Philharmonic and he never missed a performance before leaving in 1973. He continued to a teach until 2002 at The Juilliard School, where his students included Wynton Marsalis and Miles Davis.
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“Here is Kurt Masur,” the eminent German conductor said when he telephoned to talk about Wynton Marsalis’s oratorio “All Rise.” This greeting prompted thoughts about how often Masur has been there to make sure that interesting things would happen.
Commissioning a major work from Marsalis for the New York Philharmonic and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra—two of the major constituents of New York’s Lincoln Center—was Masur’s idea in the first place. And the groundwork for the idea was laid long before Masur had ever heard of Marsalis; indeed before Marsalis was born. More than a half-century ago, as a young musician studying in Leipzig, then sealed off in East Germany, Masur was fascinated by jazz.
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In stores October 1, 2002, the Sony Classical release of Wynton Marsalis’ ‘All Rise’ comes more than five years after his epic oratorio ‘Blood on the Fields’ won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. ‘All Rise,’ however, cannot be considered simply a follow-up. In fact, Marsalis first began developing the ideas behind ‘All Rise’ ten years ago, and viewed ‘Blood on the Fields’ as a step in an artistic progression that would allow him to ultimately craft his 12-movement masterpiece
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NEW YORK — It isn’t often that the combined forces of a symphony orchestra, large jazz ensemble and 60-voice choir share a stage.
But considering the stylistic range and expressive breadth of the music at hand, perhaps the sheer number of musicians jammed into Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center should not have been surprising.
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